About
I work in psychoanalytic literary and cultural studies. I am interested in how the unconscious structures our relationship with our personal and non-personal selves, with our gender, sexuality and culture.
Qualifications
Biography
I have a background in literary and clinical psychoanalysis. I completed my PhD in English Literature and Psychoanalysis at Sussex in 1994 and worked in the Cultural Studies department at The University of Birmingham from 1998 until it closed in 2002. Since then I have worked in English at The University of Birmingham.
Before coming to University as a mature student, I worked as a midwife for eight years, and am a qualified analytical therapist. My experience as a literary academic and a clinician informs my understanding of psychoanalysis and its movement within and outside the academy.
Teaching
I teach Nineteenth Century, Modern and Contemporary Literatures and Cultures, Film Studies, Cultural Theory, Sexualities and Gender.
Postgraduate supervision
Jan is interested in supervising MA and PhD research on:
-
Psychoanalysis and Literature, 19th Century, Modernism and Contemporary Literature
-
Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and Literature
-
Affect, Memory and Trauma Studies within Literature
-
Gender and Sexuality
-
Film Theory, Melodrama and Spectatorship
Research
My research interests are in psychoanalysis, in relation to nineteenth century, modern and contemporary literature, film studies, cultural theory and gender and sexuality. My last research monograph Psychoanalysis and the Time of Life was a re-reading of Freud and the unconscious through the concept of lived time in relation to debates on affect, memory, trauma and the writing of Henry Bergson. My current monograph Freudian Passions: Psychoanalysis, Form and Literature, is an understanding of how lived form, rhythm and telepathy structure unconscious reading within psychoanalysis and literature.
Research groups
I am currently involved in two research groups. Psychoanalysis, Practice and Literature is a reading group/network that has been set up between English at Birmingham, Warwick and London Universities and will be running regularly at Senate House (University of London) from next October 2011.
I am also involved in a medical humanities network at Birmingham organised in conjunction with Dr Clare Barker at The University of Birmingham.
Other activities
I regularly participate in conference activity. I am taking part in The Future of Testimony: Medicine and Testimony Symposium at the University of Sheffield in May 2011. My talk is entitled: Telepathy and the Transference of Affect: Unconscious Forms of Testimony in the Clinic.
Publications
-
Forthcoming: Freudian Passions: Psychoanalysis, Form and Literature (Karnac Books)
-
Siegfried Kracauer - Special Journal Edition with New Formations, 2007
-
Psychoanalysis and The Time Of Life: Durations of the Unconscious Self, London, (2006) Routledge
-
Film and Cinema Spectatorship: Mimesis and Melodrama (2005) Polity Press
-
Arguing With The Phallus: Feminist, Queer and Postcolonial Theory (2000) ZED Books
-
Temporalities: Autobiography and Everyday Life, edited with Jan Harbord Manchester University Press (2002),
-
Psychopolitics and Cultural Desires , Taylor and Francis,(1998), edited with Jan Harbord
-
Siegfried Kracauer - Special Journal Edition with New Formations , forthcoming April 2007